BEIRUT: Through cross-cultural education, religious and cultural diversity becomes an opportunity for societies rather than a burden, according to organizers of an international conference held Friday.
The two-day International Conference on Cross-Cultural Education, which was organized by the Adyan Foundation in partnership with Notre Dame University-Louaize and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, brought together education and civil society professionals from across Europe and the Middle East.
Speaking at the sidelines of the conference, Dr. Martin Beck, Adenauer’s resident representative of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Jordan, noted how appropriate the choice of Lebanon was to host the conference.
“This conference is perfect for [Lebanon] because there are a lot of different religious communities here and there is a close interrelationship between religion and politics,” he said. “Most of everyday life is shaped by the community you belong to.”
Although politics and religion can act as divisive forces in Lebanon, the conference provided a forum to discuss the positive roles of religion in politics.
“Cross-cultural education can show that religion is based on values, which if taken seriously implies that you don’t try to privilege your own group just because they share they your faith,” said Beck.
The conference came at the end of the Adyan Foundation’s program which focused on developing e-resources for teaching and training in diversity and dialogue. Students and teachers from Lebanon, Egypt, Italy and Poland participated in the program, which left Adyan inspired to hold an even more international conference.
Co-founder and project coordinator of Adyan, Nayla Tabbara, said she was pleased by the spirit of collaboration among the international participants at the conference. “There is growing trend among NGOs based in Europe to change the old attitude – ‘We have the knowledge and the know-how and we are bringing it to you’ – and instead to listen to our experiences and learn from the creative initiatives taking place in the Arab world,” she said.
Beck echoed the sentiment saying, “In Europe we have difficulties in the integration of Muslim communities, so cross-cultural education is very important to us. … It’s not that we believe that we [Europeans] have models that the Arab world can apply; we are struggling with similar problems so the exchange of thoughts is really on equal footing.”
As for the Arab participants, Tabbara said they “are seeking to change the mentality of those who think that they are living in a monolithic society, and bring awareness of the diversity within their own societies.”
Diversity is an open fact of life in Lebanon, and Adyan, which was founded in 2006, has been using cross-cultural education to make diversity work to the benefit of Lebanese society.
One of their programs, “Alwan,” targeted high school students, creating projects and workshops on cultural diversity as way for teenagers belonging to different religious groups to meet.
Two schools from each of Lebanon’s six governorates participated in the program, which emphasized cross-cultural and cross-religious education, and history.
“Even if the history textbooks in Lebanon have some chapters after independence in 1943, teachers generally prefer to stop teaching history when Lebanon begins. Why? because everything afterward is so emotionally present and there are so many points of views,” explained Tabbara. “Memory, history, and religion are connected in Lebanon.”
One of the most successful aspects of the program has been the training of teachers. Tabbara tells of two Muslim teachers who decided to tackle the topic of church bombings in Iraq and Alexandria using films and discussion. Their project, Tabbara said, reflects another aim of the program: “It’s not only to learn about each other, but also to be able to put yourself in the shoes of another.”